The best helping professionals are those who are able to adapt to complex, emergent situations while maintaining their grounding in a caring and responsive practice. How do helping professionals become this nimble? And what is our role as professional educators?

Here we set out to understand what it means to be an effective practitioner in the specific helping context. Second, we review various conceptions of expertise and how people have framed the trajectory from novice to expert. Finally, we explore what we have learned about helping students in their desire to become professionals in the helping fields. The talk will be of interest to anyone interested in the development of expertise.